So as the world evolves, so will the requirements for tracking identity
and digital identity. It’s no longer enough to have attributes
for “mother” and “father” … now we have to account for the
possibility of multiple parents! This article talks about some
research going on where an embryo will be created with genes from two
mothers. So a child born of this type of research will have to be
able to list their mother and father … and other mother. As we
continue to explore digital identity, I hope that people realize that
the old ways of thinking about identity are long gone.

This reminds be of some foresight used by the authors of HumanML
… the Human Markup Language. When I was reading through their
schema I was surprised to see that they have already accounted for the
possibility that someone has had a gender-change operation! They
already define the attributes for ‘gender’, along with ‘gender at
birth’! Yep … they might not be the same.

The ironic issue is that this might not be enough … what if they
change their gender numerous times? May we live in interesting
times. The world of identity is going to be rocked.

The cloned baby with two mothers. Daily Mail Sep 9 2005 8:10AM GMT [Moreover Technologies – moreover…]